It was the carpenters who dedicated the first church in the city to the Lord's putative father. Soon it was joined by many others, very dear to the Roman people.
by Paolo Biondi
Ua grayish cloud rose in the center of the Roman Forum, accompanied by a dull roar. It was one minute to three in the afternoon on August 30, 2018, and the air was scorching hot. The cloud that rose to obscure the blue sky hid the area of the Curia Iulia, seat of the ancient Roman Senate and center of imperial Rome.
The Romans' hearts stopped and the news that immediately spread with the powerful expansion of that cloud was not enough to console them: the ceiling of the church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami had collapsed, the splendid church that since 1597 has replaced the memory of Saint Peter on the Mamertine prison. It was a Thursday, the church was closed to the public and the only thing to admire the splendid coffered ceiling in gilded wood with sculptures of the Nativity and of Saints Peter and Paul was the surveillance camera, which mercilessly filmed the entire scene. If it had happened only two days later, the collapse would have submerged the crowd of people attending weddings. A dramatic event, partially compensated by the fact that a prodigious restoration allowed the roof and ceiling to be rebuilt in just two and a half years, with a Mass of thanksgiving on March 19, 2021, the day of Saint Joseph.
Thus a church has been rediscovered that has another peculiarity: it is the first in Rome dedicated to Saint Joseph. It is truly incredible that, for sixteen centuries, no church in Rome was dedicated to the putative father of Jesus, but it is in line with his being always represented in the background, starting from the Gospels onwards.
Even the birth of this church, in such a prestigious and central place in Rome, is almost casual. The place is more than prestigious: here stood the first prison of Rome, from the beginning of its foundation and in the first two and a half centuries of monarchic events, made famous by the prestige of the people who "hosted". The Mamertine prison remained famous also in the history of the nascent Christian community of Rome. Stories, never confirmed with certainty, say that Saint Peter and Saint Paul were also imprisoned here; the first bishop of Rome is said to have baptized his jailers, the saints Processo and Martiniano, using the spring that gushes from the deepest point of the prison and that can still be seen. From these events the foundation of a church called San Pietro in Carcere, a church that was rented in 1540 by the Congregation of Carpenters.
It is only due to the fact that the building became too narrow for the Congregation that in 1597 it was decided to demolish it and replace it with a new one, this time dedicated to Saint Joseph, as the patron saint of carpenters. The building was designed by Giovan Battista Montano (1534-1621) and completed by Giovanni Battista Soria (1581-1651). In 1602 the facade and the roof of the building were completed (the same collapsed in 2018), but it was necessary to wait until November 11, 1663 for the consecration.
If the veneration of Saint Joseph had to wait almost incredibly until the end of the sixteenth century to have a dedicated church, in truth it must be said that the veneration of the Romans for the putative father of Jesus is much older and had a seat a few hundred meters away from San Pietro in Carcere. In 382, when Saint Jerome returned to Rome, he brought with him the relics of the cloak of Saint Joseph and the veil of the Madonna and entrusted their preservation to the church of Sant'Anastasia al Palatino. Why Sant'Anastasia? This was the church inaugurated on December 25, 326, when Pope Sylvester celebrated Christmas there in the presence of the Emperor Constantine. It was the first time that Christmas was celebrated in the West and here, for centuries, the tradition was maintained that the Pope celebrated the Mass of Dawn on Christmas Day.
If San Giuseppe dei Falegnami is the first church dedicated to Mary's husband in Rome, we did not have to wait centuries to see the birth of the second: in the same year 1597 a chapel was erected in the Carmelite convent in Capo le Case, that is, on the edge of the inhabited center of the city, in an area that at the time was just being enhanced by the construction of the Via Sistina by Sixtus V. The cloistered origins of this chapel are still visible from the four small windows with grates, two on each side, which look out onto the high altar and from which the Carmelites followed the services.
Also linked to a female convent, of the Augustinians, is the subsequent church of Saints Joseph and Ursula. Built together with the convent in 1684 by Camilla Orsini Borghese in via Vittoria, in Campo Marzio, and later became a conservatory for girls, later deconsecrated and finally entrusted to the nearby Conservatory of Santa Cecilia which transformed it into a concert hall in 1839. In 1734, San Giuseppe della Lungara was erected in Trastevere, a church to which a convent entrusted to the Congregation of the Pious Workers was annexed. Moving forward in time, in 1884 construction began on the church of Saint Joseph of Cluny in via Poliziano, in the Monti district, annexed to the convent of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. The consecration took place in 1900 with the convent, then transformed into a holiday home for pilgrims. With the twentieth century, the construction of parish churches began which accompanied the urban development of the city. The first was the church of San Giuseppe in via Nomentana (1904), followed by San Giuseppe al Trionfale, built by San Luigi Guanella (1909) and well known to readers of The Holy Crusade. Then the church of Maria Assunta and San Giuseppe in Primavalle (1932), San Giuseppe Artigiano in Collatino (1958), and finally San Giuseppe all'Aurelio (1970).